FIC: No Loose Ends. LoM, Red Cortina.
Title: No Loose Ends
Summary: Before Gene, Chris and Ray leave for London, there's some unfinished business…
Author: Me - Elf.
Characters: Ray, Gene.
Word Count: 2100
Rating: Red Cortina
Notes: Wonderfully beta'd by gritsinmisery.
His fingers drummed against his leg, a small unconscious movement. He wanted a cigarette badly, but he knew he couldn't risk it. The red glow and the smell of smoke could be enough to give him away. It wasn’t worth the risk.
Stupid bastard had always been telling them they should give up.
Finally there was the glow of car lights approaching, lighting up a huge halo of mist and casting the trees and buildings into dark silhouettes. A second later the engine was audible - deep and powerful, growling through the still night.
Somewhere close to him something scuttled away in the undergrowth. Further away, across the fields, an owl screeched out for its mate.
He wasn't used to the sounds of the countryside, having spent so long in the city, with its own peculiar chorus of the night, but it didn't worry him. Nature wasn’t his enemy tonight.
The car rolled past his position, the brightness of the headlights giving way to the blood-red hue of the rear ones. They cast a surreal glow over the area, a hellish warning of things to come.
The tyres scrunched on the gravel, and he engine fell silent, save for the tick of metal as it cooled quickly in the cold night air.
He put his hand in his pocket, closing his fingers around the solid, reassuring butt of the revolver. He silently drew it, the other hand automatically reaching for the cylinder and spinning it slowly. The noise of the catch clicking over seemed ridiculously loud. Then he cocked the gun.
He heard the dull 'clunk' as the car door opened. The weak interior light of the Granada shone out enough for him to see the driver. He nodded to himself, satisfied that everything was going to plan.
As the figure slammed the door and turned to walk to the house he stepped out, his footfalls almost silent on the grass. He crossed the lawn in seconds, and in one swift movement pressed the barrel of his gun into the back of the man's neck whilst grabbing his left arm.
"Don't fucking move or I'll spread your head all over this pretty garden.”
There was a split second when he feared the man might try something, but then the moment was gone. He allowed himself to relax a fraction.
"Kneel down," he growled.
"Greggy? Is that you? You fucking about with me?" There was a waver in the voice and it was pitched higher than normal.
"It ain't Greggy, and I ain't fucking about."
When the man was kneeling in the wet grass he finally moved, the end of the gun dragging around the man's neck, under his ear, then up his cheek to settle millimetres away from one eye. He was still aware of the chance of the man fighting back. Robbing him of the vision of one eye with the gun barrel was a simple way to ruin his telescopic vision and make him think twice about any attack.
The terror in the man’s face was plain to see.
"You! You can't fucking do this! I'll have my lawyer on you, you just..."
He stopped the man mid-sentence. "Shut up. You talk when I tell you to."
The man’s mouth opened and closed, but no sound emerged.
“I’m giving you one last chance. What happened to Tyler?”
The man didn’t even dare to shake his head. “I don’t know, I told you, I didn’t…didn’t see. The car went into the canal, ‘s all. I didn’t see where he went, I didn’t do nothing!”
He removed the gun from the man’s face, and the man visibly relaxed, taking a deep breath, dropping his head forward slightly.
He shot him in the leg, just above the knee. The sound crashed around the walls of the barn and house, causing a great uproar of roosting birds to take to the darkened sky, cawing and squawking. The man screamed, falling forward, grabbing his ruined flesh, rolling on the ground.
When he had quieted to a whimper the cocked gun returned in front of his face.
“I’ll do the other one, believe me. Tell me what you did to him. You were the only one there - the only one who could have done anything. We’ve had that canal dredged; there’s no current, he wouldn’t have gone anywhere if he’d drowned. Car was empty. No one’s seen him since. What did you do? Drag himself out of the water, did he? Only to find you waiting? We know you went back, tyre marks showed that.”
The man didn’t answer, so the gun started moving, heading for the other leg.
“No! No! I didn’t see him! I saw the car, sure, I never saw him. He didn’t come up - I dunno if he were in the car or what, I didn’t see - I were ahead, I stopped and come back, and he weren’t there!”
The gun stopped its progress.
“If I ever find out - even hear a fucking whisper - that you’re lying to me, I will hunt you down and kill you. And I will hear. There’s no loyalty in your game no more.”
“I’m not, I’m not, I swear to God! I don’t know nothing, I’d’ve told you. I never saw him after I seen that car slide off behind me.”
He nodded slowly. He believed now that the man would have broken, he would have confessed.
He stood, knees clicking, looking down in the dim light. The man still clutched his leg, face half buried in the long wet grass, mouth open as he panted from the pain.
The trigger gave easily under his finger, and the small clean hole in the man’s temple belied the mess of blood and brain that burst out onto the grass under the remains of his skull. His eyes didn’t change, as if the picture had been paused, they remained open, glassy, staring out.
The open mouth now dribbled blood in a steady flow.
The birds once again took to the skies, barely having settled from the first shot.
He walked swiftly to the house - the door of which he had opened earlier, knowing his target would never get that far.
Once inside he stripped out of the blue overalls he had worn, taken from the man’s own wardrobe. Underneath he wore his own dark jeans and a jumper. He touched a match to the fire that had already been laid in the hearth. He fed the material in carefully, knowing that dumping them in would smother it. He looked in the mirror on the mantelpiece and checked his face for any spatters of blood - there were none. He removed the bullets from the gun and carefully wiped each one of them and the entire gun before returning the shells to his pocket, and throwing the gun onto the fire too. He knew it wouldn’t be destroyed, but he had no further use for it.
He left the light on as he walked away, and the door wide open. He didn’t glance at the puddle of darkness on the lawn that had been a life. He imagined the crows and animals would make good work of the brains and eyes by the time someone found the body.
He tried not to look at their faces, usually. Somehow it made it easier to separate himself from his actions. The first one - an accident - had made him vomit. The thought that he had taken a life… But there had been many more since then. They never left him - they haunted his dreams, but he could cope. And better that he do it than someone else - someone who it could destroy. Someone who could lose everything. Heartless bastard, he’d been called. He couldn’t really disagree.
He walked away, down the long dark track, but before he reached the road he struck off at a tangent across the fields, hopping over fences and finally emerging near an abandoned farm yard. It was a good few miles away from the house, and the walk had taken him nearly an hour. The adrenalin had almost left his veins as he sat in his car, removed his leather gloves and started the engine. He drove carefully, tooling along the country lanes and finally through the quiet city streets. He parked up and headed inside, intent on getting some rest before the morning came.
“Right, last night someone found James O’Connor’s body,” Gene called out across the office. Silence fell quickly, the chatter receding like a wave running down the beach. Everyone knew the name. “Murdered. Shot twice. Been dead a few days, so Oswald says. We’re waiting on the report.” He looked around the office, taking in each face, each reaction.
The bulk of them looked satisfied, but wary. Waiting to take their lead from him. Chris’s eyes were wide, shocked? Cartwright was hard to read, her eyes hidden behind her hair, but she wasn’t looking at him, instead staring down at her desk. He didn’t blame her. It might have been a long time, but that didn’t mean the wounds weren’t still raw. Phyllis was by the door, clutching folders. She looked smug, as if she knew something they all didn’t. But then she always looked a bit like that. And Ray, he was still chewing, cigarette burning down between his fingers, feet in his desk drawer. Nothing unusual.
“This isn’t our case, being off the manor. But I want you all to listen out. Plod says the lights were on, fire burnt out in the hearth, bed made. No signs of a struggle. Weapon was there, in the fire. Suggests it was in the evening, if the fire was going. Plod are going door to door, although doors in that part are few and far between. Anyone hears a whisper on the streets, I want to know about it. Right?”
Everyone nodded.
Gene walked back into his office. He took a long drag from his hip flask, even though it was before ten. He didn’t expect anyone to find anything out, if he was honest. Didn’t know if he wanted anything found. The scrote who died certainly didn’t deserve their time and energy.
He had wished O’Connor dead many a time, but now…now it was so final. Now there wasn’t any hope they would ever find Tyler’s body.
He looked around at the office. Things half in boxes, the ring of dirt on the wall where the dartboard had hung, piles of paperwork somewhat optimistically waiting to be filed. Maybe it was time. They were leaving in three days - leaving all this behind. Leaving Manchester, the rest of the team and a whole lot of memories. He began shuffling more items, emptying more drawers. Scrawling the odd label to give his successor some chance of deciphering the filing system, which had gone to seed since Tyler had disappeared.
By five there was no word - no one knew anything. James O’Connor had always been lowlife, always living on the edge of the murky underworld. No one would miss him.
He sat in the corner of the Arms and wasn’t surprised when Ray and Chris both joined him. They stuck together even more now, with their departure looming close.
“No news then, Guv?” Chris asked - still optimistic, still eager, after everything.
Gene shook his head.
“No loss,” Ray put in, speaking around the cigarette he was busy lighting.
Gene looked at him. “I still…still wonder if the bastard did know something,” Gene admitted. “S’pose we’ll never know now.”
Ray took a long drag. “He didn’t know owt, Guv,” he said in a cloud of smoke.
“No?” It was barely a question.
Ray shook his head.
And Gene thought he could feel a penny on the edge of dropping, somewhere in his brain. He looked at Ray, long and hard.
“No loose ends, Guv,” Ray said, not uncomfortable in the intense gaze. “It’s the best way.”
Chris looked from one man to the other, feeling as if there was an entire conversation going on that he wasn’t hearing.
Gene nodded. When he next went to the bar he bought Ray a large Scotch.
Sometimes, sitting in the Italian wine bar, in a city that wasn’t his home, he still looked at Ray, still wondered. But he would never ask outright. He was a man of the world; little bothered him, little made him uncomfortable. But he knew there were some things he was better off not knowing.
If Ray could live with it, he could live with that.
Summary: Before Gene, Chris and Ray leave for London, there's some unfinished business…
Author: Me - Elf.
Characters: Ray, Gene.
Word Count: 2100
Rating: Red Cortina
Notes: Wonderfully beta'd by gritsinmisery.
His fingers drummed against his leg, a small unconscious movement. He wanted a cigarette badly, but he knew he couldn't risk it. The red glow and the smell of smoke could be enough to give him away. It wasn’t worth the risk.
Stupid bastard had always been telling them they should give up.
Finally there was the glow of car lights approaching, lighting up a huge halo of mist and casting the trees and buildings into dark silhouettes. A second later the engine was audible - deep and powerful, growling through the still night.
Somewhere close to him something scuttled away in the undergrowth. Further away, across the fields, an owl screeched out for its mate.
He wasn't used to the sounds of the countryside, having spent so long in the city, with its own peculiar chorus of the night, but it didn't worry him. Nature wasn’t his enemy tonight.
The car rolled past his position, the brightness of the headlights giving way to the blood-red hue of the rear ones. They cast a surreal glow over the area, a hellish warning of things to come.
The tyres scrunched on the gravel, and he engine fell silent, save for the tick of metal as it cooled quickly in the cold night air.
He put his hand in his pocket, closing his fingers around the solid, reassuring butt of the revolver. He silently drew it, the other hand automatically reaching for the cylinder and spinning it slowly. The noise of the catch clicking over seemed ridiculously loud. Then he cocked the gun.
He heard the dull 'clunk' as the car door opened. The weak interior light of the Granada shone out enough for him to see the driver. He nodded to himself, satisfied that everything was going to plan.
As the figure slammed the door and turned to walk to the house he stepped out, his footfalls almost silent on the grass. He crossed the lawn in seconds, and in one swift movement pressed the barrel of his gun into the back of the man's neck whilst grabbing his left arm.
"Don't fucking move or I'll spread your head all over this pretty garden.”
There was a split second when he feared the man might try something, but then the moment was gone. He allowed himself to relax a fraction.
"Kneel down," he growled.
"Greggy? Is that you? You fucking about with me?" There was a waver in the voice and it was pitched higher than normal.
"It ain't Greggy, and I ain't fucking about."
When the man was kneeling in the wet grass he finally moved, the end of the gun dragging around the man's neck, under his ear, then up his cheek to settle millimetres away from one eye. He was still aware of the chance of the man fighting back. Robbing him of the vision of one eye with the gun barrel was a simple way to ruin his telescopic vision and make him think twice about any attack.
The terror in the man’s face was plain to see.
"You! You can't fucking do this! I'll have my lawyer on you, you just..."
He stopped the man mid-sentence. "Shut up. You talk when I tell you to."
The man’s mouth opened and closed, but no sound emerged.
“I’m giving you one last chance. What happened to Tyler?”
The man didn’t even dare to shake his head. “I don’t know, I told you, I didn’t…didn’t see. The car went into the canal, ‘s all. I didn’t see where he went, I didn’t do nothing!”
He removed the gun from the man’s face, and the man visibly relaxed, taking a deep breath, dropping his head forward slightly.
He shot him in the leg, just above the knee. The sound crashed around the walls of the barn and house, causing a great uproar of roosting birds to take to the darkened sky, cawing and squawking. The man screamed, falling forward, grabbing his ruined flesh, rolling on the ground.
When he had quieted to a whimper the cocked gun returned in front of his face.
“I’ll do the other one, believe me. Tell me what you did to him. You were the only one there - the only one who could have done anything. We’ve had that canal dredged; there’s no current, he wouldn’t have gone anywhere if he’d drowned. Car was empty. No one’s seen him since. What did you do? Drag himself out of the water, did he? Only to find you waiting? We know you went back, tyre marks showed that.”
The man didn’t answer, so the gun started moving, heading for the other leg.
“No! No! I didn’t see him! I saw the car, sure, I never saw him. He didn’t come up - I dunno if he were in the car or what, I didn’t see - I were ahead, I stopped and come back, and he weren’t there!”
The gun stopped its progress.
“If I ever find out - even hear a fucking whisper - that you’re lying to me, I will hunt you down and kill you. And I will hear. There’s no loyalty in your game no more.”
“I’m not, I’m not, I swear to God! I don’t know nothing, I’d’ve told you. I never saw him after I seen that car slide off behind me.”
He nodded slowly. He believed now that the man would have broken, he would have confessed.
He stood, knees clicking, looking down in the dim light. The man still clutched his leg, face half buried in the long wet grass, mouth open as he panted from the pain.
The trigger gave easily under his finger, and the small clean hole in the man’s temple belied the mess of blood and brain that burst out onto the grass under the remains of his skull. His eyes didn’t change, as if the picture had been paused, they remained open, glassy, staring out.
The open mouth now dribbled blood in a steady flow.
The birds once again took to the skies, barely having settled from the first shot.
He walked swiftly to the house - the door of which he had opened earlier, knowing his target would never get that far.
Once inside he stripped out of the blue overalls he had worn, taken from the man’s own wardrobe. Underneath he wore his own dark jeans and a jumper. He touched a match to the fire that had already been laid in the hearth. He fed the material in carefully, knowing that dumping them in would smother it. He looked in the mirror on the mantelpiece and checked his face for any spatters of blood - there were none. He removed the bullets from the gun and carefully wiped each one of them and the entire gun before returning the shells to his pocket, and throwing the gun onto the fire too. He knew it wouldn’t be destroyed, but he had no further use for it.
He left the light on as he walked away, and the door wide open. He didn’t glance at the puddle of darkness on the lawn that had been a life. He imagined the crows and animals would make good work of the brains and eyes by the time someone found the body.
He tried not to look at their faces, usually. Somehow it made it easier to separate himself from his actions. The first one - an accident - had made him vomit. The thought that he had taken a life… But there had been many more since then. They never left him - they haunted his dreams, but he could cope. And better that he do it than someone else - someone who it could destroy. Someone who could lose everything. Heartless bastard, he’d been called. He couldn’t really disagree.
He walked away, down the long dark track, but before he reached the road he struck off at a tangent across the fields, hopping over fences and finally emerging near an abandoned farm yard. It was a good few miles away from the house, and the walk had taken him nearly an hour. The adrenalin had almost left his veins as he sat in his car, removed his leather gloves and started the engine. He drove carefully, tooling along the country lanes and finally through the quiet city streets. He parked up and headed inside, intent on getting some rest before the morning came.
“Right, last night someone found James O’Connor’s body,” Gene called out across the office. Silence fell quickly, the chatter receding like a wave running down the beach. Everyone knew the name. “Murdered. Shot twice. Been dead a few days, so Oswald says. We’re waiting on the report.” He looked around the office, taking in each face, each reaction.
The bulk of them looked satisfied, but wary. Waiting to take their lead from him. Chris’s eyes were wide, shocked? Cartwright was hard to read, her eyes hidden behind her hair, but she wasn’t looking at him, instead staring down at her desk. He didn’t blame her. It might have been a long time, but that didn’t mean the wounds weren’t still raw. Phyllis was by the door, clutching folders. She looked smug, as if she knew something they all didn’t. But then she always looked a bit like that. And Ray, he was still chewing, cigarette burning down between his fingers, feet in his desk drawer. Nothing unusual.
“This isn’t our case, being off the manor. But I want you all to listen out. Plod says the lights were on, fire burnt out in the hearth, bed made. No signs of a struggle. Weapon was there, in the fire. Suggests it was in the evening, if the fire was going. Plod are going door to door, although doors in that part are few and far between. Anyone hears a whisper on the streets, I want to know about it. Right?”
Everyone nodded.
Gene walked back into his office. He took a long drag from his hip flask, even though it was before ten. He didn’t expect anyone to find anything out, if he was honest. Didn’t know if he wanted anything found. The scrote who died certainly didn’t deserve their time and energy.
He had wished O’Connor dead many a time, but now…now it was so final. Now there wasn’t any hope they would ever find Tyler’s body.
He looked around at the office. Things half in boxes, the ring of dirt on the wall where the dartboard had hung, piles of paperwork somewhat optimistically waiting to be filed. Maybe it was time. They were leaving in three days - leaving all this behind. Leaving Manchester, the rest of the team and a whole lot of memories. He began shuffling more items, emptying more drawers. Scrawling the odd label to give his successor some chance of deciphering the filing system, which had gone to seed since Tyler had disappeared.
By five there was no word - no one knew anything. James O’Connor had always been lowlife, always living on the edge of the murky underworld. No one would miss him.
He sat in the corner of the Arms and wasn’t surprised when Ray and Chris both joined him. They stuck together even more now, with their departure looming close.
“No news then, Guv?” Chris asked - still optimistic, still eager, after everything.
Gene shook his head.
“No loss,” Ray put in, speaking around the cigarette he was busy lighting.
Gene looked at him. “I still…still wonder if the bastard did know something,” Gene admitted. “S’pose we’ll never know now.”
Ray took a long drag. “He didn’t know owt, Guv,” he said in a cloud of smoke.
“No?” It was barely a question.
Ray shook his head.
And Gene thought he could feel a penny on the edge of dropping, somewhere in his brain. He looked at Ray, long and hard.
“No loose ends, Guv,” Ray said, not uncomfortable in the intense gaze. “It’s the best way.”
Chris looked from one man to the other, feeling as if there was an entire conversation going on that he wasn’t hearing.
Gene nodded. When he next went to the bar he bought Ray a large Scotch.
Sometimes, sitting in the Italian wine bar, in a city that wasn’t his home, he still looked at Ray, still wondered. But he would never ask outright. He was a man of the world; little bothered him, little made him uncomfortable. But he knew there were some things he was better off not knowing.
If Ray could live with it, he could live with that.